The first playthrough was the most difficult, but after you learn the patterns of all the enemies it becomes easier. Still hard though, especially w/ black soul/world tendency and the black phantoms start coming around

It really wasn't as hard as some fans hyped it. More than anything, it was rewarding. That's just what the best experience was. These days gameplay is cheap, holds your hand, and feels worn off. Demon's Souls upheld tension, patience, awareness, and persistence.

It wasn't uber difficult. In fact, it got easier as you played, which is my only real complaint. But those beginning hours were very hard, and that was just refreshing to see.

Demon's Souls isn't about being "hard". It's about learning how to kick ass while getting your ass kicked.

You can find yourself fighting in a narrow ledge, by the cliffside, fighting a ridiculously strong skeleton while avoiding strikes from a mutated sting-ray only to get killed by a douchebag (black phantom player) with intentions to truly make life even more misrable to you by shooting arrows from the other side, forcing you to accept that all the effort gathered to this point is going to hell. By then you could instantly feel the moment where you say "NOW THIS IS F*CKING HARDCORE" , becuase you know FULLY well that you signed up for this.

What deterred me from this game - apart form the fact that I would play for three hours and lose everything after a death - was how boring the game was. The enemies in the first world were just skeletons in armor, mostly. Then armored knights with red or blue eyes, then blob monsters and a dragon that repeated the same flyover. It was really quite dull. Not a word was spoken by any NPC for half an hour at a time. Then I moved on to the blob monsters and realized how uninspired the game was for me.

And the entire package is wrapped up in mediocre visuals. The philosophy behind the game can easily be duplicated for any other game. Naughty Dog can add a mode in their Uncharted games that would eliminate checkpoints ans the ability to save, and this would be the very same kind of difficulty as that found in DS.

Any game can do this. The fact that Naughty Dog or Epic or any other dev gives the player the option to play the game in an easier mode is what deters the masochistic type of players. They want a game like this. That's why DS is niche.

How did you play the game? Did you spend that 3 hours just hoarding your souls without spending them to upgrade your stats? If that's the case, then yeah, you're just going to keep dying and never progress past that first level.

I'm not used to playing this specific type of medieval RPG, so the items being sold by that guy in the nexus or in world 1 didn't stand out to me as being important.

I'm not saying I played the game correctly, but you do realize that the developers say that no matter what you do you're going to die a lot and lose a lot of your time with the game, so it's strange that now you guys are telling me I was playing it wrong. As specifically advertised, I was supposed to die a lot in order to feel rewarded for beating a world. Yet, unlike many of you guys who claimed the game was rewarding, I felt nothing but utter frustration at having spent so many hours playing through the first world only to come out of it with so little.

This kind of game only attracts the kinds of players who already spend way too much time with video games that they simply don't recognize or don't care if they lose an hour's worth of effort.

Few people want games like this. They want to experience something with faster pacing, a more fleshed out story, a definitive bad guy (not just lovecraftian-inspired blobs), and a hero or cause they can identify with.

@kaveti6616 You actually need to be going to the woman in black in the Nexus and spending your souls to upgrade actual stats like power, defense, magic, etc., otherwise you'll remain too weak to progress. And of course, make sure you always have plenty of that healing grass (I forget the actual name).

Enough with these bulls*** headlines & articles about Demon's souls not being hard ! it was f***ing hard ! if you p***y out reading faqs and watching playthroughs on Youtube,then yeah it is a lot easier,but for someone who doesn't "CHEAT" his way into it,Demon's souls can be a pain in the a** because of how bad it punishes you for the simplest of mistakes !

all in good fun though,the game was amazing,I went to level 168,and stoped there,I really need to continue playing...!

You’re just not very good at the game. But very nice article. My problem with Demon’s Souls is that it’s too easy the second time through. Once you learn the initial strategy, it’s almost impossible to fail the second time.

That picture shows me completing the game the second time through without dying, on a low level character, in just under 5 hours. I used to load up Demon’s Souls and finish it in 3 or less (one sitting). GREAT game, probably one of my favs, but does difficulty in such a way that somewhat harms replay value.

To each their own btw. I'm TERRIBLE at RTS and Sports games. I'm just good at fighting games due to crap loads of Street Fighter IV and Ninja Gaiden Black/2.

It was challenging and certainly intimidating, but not as difficult as people make it out to be(IMO). To me it was just right and was actually a very nice balance. It had what so many games these days are lacking. It's refreshing to play a game that wasn't full of casual, nub friendly bs.

Besides, you can start a game with a silver catalyst and MP regeneration ring which makes the first level much easier. Then you can go to 4-1 if you are brave and with skill you can pick up some very useful tools/enhancements.

thyis game was the bane of my existence !!! its just messed up much harder it gets in the subsequent playthrough it seems 10 times harder eachtime(i attempted a second playthrough under the guise that i would be uber compared to everrything as i was lv 80 something)